I was thinking of this because I'm reading "The Blast", which is essentially a labor agitation anarchist paper from the late teens of the 20th century. Much of the paper is both social critique and a call to arms against capitalist exploiters, it reminds me a lot of the modern anarchist paper "Fire to The Prisons". The writing style is completely different, but they both encourage malice towards the powers that be.

You could argue that agitating people against the powers that be is a form of organizing, as to me I find the rhetoric in the papers appealing but find political calls to action to be really annoying at the same time.

2 Answers

+1 vote

My visceral reaction is that, at least in the sense you use are using it, it is not something of interest to me. When I am acting with friends or comrades, and working on various anarchist projects, I am doing so for our collective benefit. Sometimes those projects are about trying to facilitate situations that do expose those unfamiliar with anarchy to the ideas, thereby potentially meeting new comrades, but I would differentiate that from trying to agitate with the intent of organizing the masses or building a revolutionary consciousness in the proletariat or whatever. I very rarely tell people how they should act, or if they should act.

I do think there are other ways one might engage with concepts of "organizing" that would be more in alignment with my particular anarchism, but I also think those would better be addressed in a different question.

while ingrate's answer is very in line with most of the folks on this site, the question as it stands, "does organizing in any sense interest anarchists" has the obvious answer of yes for most anarchists.

the vast majority of anarchists believe in encouraging people to act and think differently, and in particular ways. more of an answer would require a more fleshed out question.